Word: catholicize
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Although the American Catholic community is too diverse to usefully refer to it as a monolithic bloc, presidential campaigns have long considered Catholic voters an essential part of a winning strategy. They are the largest single religious constituency in the electorate (33 million voted in 2004) and have aligned themselves...
So it was perhaps no surprise that the Al Smith Dinner, which gives candidates the chance to hobnob with Catholic opinion leaders just weeks before an election, became what Theodore White called "a ritual of American politics." John Kennedy and Richard Nixon were the first contenders for the White House...
By 1984, New York's newly-appointed Archbishop John O'Connor had already spent much of his short time in the position taking on the state's two most prominent Catholic Democrats: Governor Mario Cuomo and Vice Presidential-nominee Geraldine Ferraro. By the time the dinner rolled along, tensions between...
After Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush traded passive-aggressive jabs in 1988, O'Connor simply didn't invite the presidential candidates in either 1992 or 1996. The slight was particularly painful for Bill Clinton, who developed an affinity for the Catholic Church as an undergraduate at Georgetown University. And...
A truce seemed in sight in 2000 when O'Connor was succeeded by Cardinal Edward Egan, a prelate far less interested in making political waves. And indeed he invited Al Gore and George W. Bush to the event that fall. Just four years later, though, both Bush and John Kerry...